Chapter 53
RAFE
I find a doctor. She works at one of the private hospitals in Lausanne, and it only takes a couple of phone calls. She comes forty-five minutes later. I spend most of that time sitting in a chair in the corner of our suite, watching Paige curled up and napping with the watch I gave her in hand.
It was an impulse order. A question to one of the master craftswomen in the factory a week ago, asking if we could replace the watch face on one of the Jewels. She turned around amazing work. Impeccable. A piece of the ocean for Paige when she has to be far away from it.
I picked it up earlier today in the factory and realized there was no way I could give it to her. Because we’re not… that.
We could be that.
I can see it, on the horizon. A beckoning prospect or a mirage.
But we’re not. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I’ve never been someone’s husband before, and she still resents me for forcing her into this position.
But then she asked me if I was leaving, with a tone like that was the worst thing she could think of.
And I gave it to her anyway.
There’s a low knock on the door, and I get up to let in the doctor. Paige comes to when she’s examined. A hand on her forehead, a thermometer beneath her tongue. She complies.
She groans a little but answers basic questions. It seems like she’s only barely lucid. Her eyes look a light chestnut beneath the doctor’s flashlight.
I shove my hands into my pockets to keep them from moving. From turning into fists at my sides or grabbing Paige’s hand. Illness. It’s not something I’d considered before, but of course there’s illness, too, to worry about. Taking someone suddenly.
She didn’t tell me earlier today that she was feeling ill. She played along, let me… fuck. She’d been so hot against my tongue. Had she been feverish even then?
“Your pulse is quick,” the doctor says in French-accented English. “A temp of nearly 38.7. No wonder you’re feeling so… bad.”
“What’s that? 38?” Paige looks at me.
“Just over a hundred Fahrenheit,” I tell her.
“Oh.” She sinks back against the pillow, her eyes drifting closed. The doctor’s thorough. Listens to Paige’s lungs and heart, too, while I hover.
After she’s done with her examination, the doctor turns to me with a bottle of fever-reducing pills. They’re stronger than the single painkiller I gave her earlier.
“Likely a viral infection,” she tells me. “The flu is rare this time of year, but it happens. Keep her cool. If the fever doesn’t break tomorrow, call me again.”
I thank her and tell her she’ll be compensated well. She’s lucky to have such a caring husband, she tells me, and leaves the hotel suite.
I grab the book I’m reading and pull the chair in close to the bed. Paige is still curled up on her side, eyes closed, napping again. I wonder if she’ll have any memory of this tomorrow.
I try to read. It’s hard to focus, shifting from the pages before me to looking at her. Her skin is flushed. I change the cool towels twice, and we pass over an hour like that.
Until she starts to shift in bed. She burrows deeper under the comforter like she’s cold. It’s impossible. She’s hot—too hot. But the body doesn’t act rationally when you have a high fever.
She pushes the cool towel off her forehead.
“You’re cold?”
“Yes.” Her teeth clatter. Damn it. I put a blanket on top of the comforter. The hotel room isn’t cold. It’s inside her, this virus that had her sweating earlier and has now made her clammy.
After another few minutes of her shaking, her eyes meet mine with bleak focus. “Rafe?”
I brush hair off her face. It’s the only part of her that’s above the edge of the blanket. Her skin is dry and hot to the touch. I hate that her teeth are chattering. She’s meant to be diving off my dock and giving me fucking heart attacks. Not making me hurt this way.
“Want me to hold you?” I ask. Maybe it will help warm her up. And maybe there’s a twitching in my hands that can only be relieved by having her in their grasp.
She nods. “Yes. Please.”
I shrug out of my shirt and climb in beside her. She’s still in that damn gala dress. One of the few I picked out in a deep red that reminded me of her nail polish.
The one I can’t seem to get out of my head.
I pull Paige against me. She turns with a sigh. A cold hand finds my arm and pulls it more snugly around her.
She’s hot to the touch and shivering with cold.
“Thank you,” she says through clattering teeth.
Thanking me for nothing but being here. She’s not meant to thank me either, just like she’s not meant to be sick. Those are not our roles.
They shouldn’t be our roles.
I run my hand over her back in a few quick swipes to heat her up. She’s not actually cold, but she’s feeling like it. The pill she’s just swallowed should help reduce the fever. Reduce the pain and headache, too.
“You might get sick.” Her hands have found my bare shoulder and my chest, and she presses her clammy fingers against my skin.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I ask against her temple.
She chuckles. It dies just as quickly as it started, and she groans. “My head.”
“The pill should start working soon.”
“Mhm.” She turns a little and settles more firmly against me. For a long minute the only sound is her breathing.
Her body is still shivering, but not as much as before.
“Can you tell me something?” she asks.
“Tell you what?”
“Anything. Just… talk to me. Tell me about Switzerland.”
“Switzerland?”
“It’s your home. And your voice… is very nice.” Her teeth chatter again, and I tighten my arms around her.
“There’s not much to say,” I start. Because there isn’t.
“I moved away as a kid. But we’d come here often, to ski or to visit family.
To visit the factory,” I say. We’ve rarely spoken like this.
Easy and without any hint of an argument.
My hand finds the bare skin atop her gala dress, and it’s scorching.
“You are so international.”
“Spread over three countries, yes,” I say dryly. “My mother took to France quickly, but we spent most summers back in the US with her family.”
This can’t be something she’s interested in listening to, surely.
“Three… languages,” she murmurs. Her voice is exhausted. I turn onto my back so I can hold her more firmly against me. Her head comes to rest on my shoulder, and I pull the covers up even higher. I’ve started sweating. I can feel it, gathering at my temples, from her furnace.
“Four if you count the German lessons,” I say.
“German too?” Her voice comes out so offended and yet so weak that it makes my lips curl.
“Yes. It’s the third of Switzerland’s official languages, but it’s my weakest one.”
“I hate you,” she mutters against my neck.
“I know, darling. I hate you too.”
It sounds like one of the first true compliments we’ve ever given each other.
“You annoy me when you speak in Italian or French,” she says. “I don’t like not being able to understand you.”
“I know. That’s why I do it.”
“I figured.” She sighs, and it sounds oddly like contentment. “And it’s annoying how good you are at it. It’s hot, too.”
My hand pauses on her back. “Hot?”
“Yes,” she says with a sigh.
Well. That’s good to know.
For another long few minutes she doesn’t speak. Just shivers with less and less intensity. Maybe we’ll need to stay here all of tomorrow too. I can make that work. Just need to tell Karim that the plans have changed, and—
“Rafe?”
“Mhm?”
Her voice is close to my neck, her arm slung over my torso. “Why do you do it? The fighting?”
I look up at the ceiling. The hotel has an intricate diamond shape in the wood, just barely noticeable in the darkness. Above us hangs a chandelier. Delicate little drops of crystal, each fragile on their own and strong when combined.
She has me cornered, and she’s taking advantage of that with this question. I can’t help but respect her for it.
She’s always played a damn good game.
“Rafe,” she says, and it sounds so weak and yet so determined that it makes me smile.
“It’s not easy to explain,” I say.
“I think you should stop,” she mutters. “Don’t go back to that place. It was horrible.”
This isn’t something I talk about. With anyone. James came with me the time before the wedding, but was silent damn near the whole time, and handed me the water bottle afterward. That’s it.
He knows better than to lecture others about bad habits.
But that doesn’t mean he understands. I’m not sure anyone would, if I tried to explain it to them. The way it cleanses the guilt from me in a way that makes it bearable.
“That’s not my regular place. When I’m in Como, I mean. And it’s rarely as… intense as when you snuck in there.”
When I had to fight to cover her transgression. It was savage in a way I rarely let myself get. Never the face, don’t break skin on the knuckles. Duck, kick, win.
And I was fucking terrified seeing her in there. She had no place there.
“Don’t do it again,” she says.
“I can’t promise that,” I say, and take a deep breath. Her hair smells good, fresh from her earlier shower. It’s the only way to handle the clawing guilt that sometimes threatens to drown me. Pain is good for that. It cleanses.
“You made me promise to never go there again,” she says. “Why can’t you promise me the same?”
“It’s different. You don’t belong there.”
She scoffs. It’s a faint little puff of air against my neck, so different from the fury and laughter she rains down on me on a normal day.
I brush my lips against her hair. “Do you care?”
I don’t think she’s going to answer me. But then she does, her hand flat against the side of my ribs. Right over the scar I know she’s clocked but hasn’t asked about yet.
“I can’t… waste my good foundation… on you. We’re not a color match.”
I smile up at the ceiling. “I’ll buy you more. Whenever.”
“I didn’t like seeing you hurt,” she says. Another shiver racks her. “It just didn’t… feel good.”
It takes me a few times to find the right words. Maybe she won’t remember this in the morning. But I will. And I doubt I’ll ever forget.
“I don’t like seeing you sick either. Or when you have your panic attacks.”
She sighs so heavily it sends the blonde tendril along her cheek into the air. “Well. I never meant for you to see those.”
“I never meant for you to see me fighting either. But you found your way there anyway,” I say. She seems to be good at that. Finding ways through small cracks, working her way into them, widening them until she fits the whole way through.
Making space when there is none.
“I think I’m… starting to like you. I know it’s not good for me.” She yawns, and I run a hand over her hair. It’s loose now. I’ve never gotten to touch it so freely before, but I do now, stroking her head and down her back. “But I can’t help it.”
“I know, darling. I can’t help it either.” My lips press against her forehead, and there’s an odd tightening inside my chest. Like she’s cracked that wide open too. “But I wonder if you’ll remember any of this tomorrow.”
There’s no response.
She’s fallen asleep, drifted off in my arms.